Military

H. Hookham introduces Augustus F. Lindley, a contemporary and opponent of General Gordon’s, who served the Taipings during their nineteenth century rebellion against the Manchu dynasty.

Robert Cecil describes how, despite the blandishments of commissions from Philadelphia, and the exercise of force by the Continental Congress, Canada chose to remain separate in the 1770s.

Townsend Miller describes the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, issued in Spain’s greatest century and accomplished amid civil war and in spite of foreign intervention.

Among military adventurers who have served in India, Mildred Archer writes, none was more dashing than the half-Indian leader of the famous Irregular Cavalry Corps known as Skinner’s Horse.

Civil war was always the bane of the Italian city-states. E.R. Chamberlain describes how, at the end of the fourteenth century, it seemed that the whole peninsula might soon be re-united under a single man's control.

J.J. Saunders continues the story of the first, and perhaps the greatest, of Islam’s Commanders of the Faithful. The Caliph Omar, after triumphantly laying the foundations of the Arab Empire, fell to a Persian Christian assassin in the year 644.

J.J. Saunders describes how, under Muhammad's second successor, the Caliph Omar, the great era of Arab expansion began, that carried the faith of Islam westwards, to Spain, and eastwards, far into the Orient.

Was King Harold slain by a Norman arrow that pierced his eye? Charles H. Gibbs-Smith adduces a powerful argument for correcting the traditional story. 

Given the immense time, labour and costs involved in constructing defensive works, it is surprising that decisive action occurred so rarely around or about them. T.H. McGuffe looks at how the appeal of military fortifications faded with time.

In 1748 Sweden embarked on the construction of an elaborate island fortress. This was her last attempt, writes Anthony Wood, to check the Russian thrust westwards.